Wayne Xu

Launched as a joint endea­vor by Alibaba, Tencent, and Chinese insurer Ping An in 2013, Shanghai-based insurance company Zhong An has grown, under the guidance of Wayne Xu, into an $8 billion–plus juggernaut—China’s first and largest online-only insurer. Though the business originally focused on mundane transactions—one-time policies to cover return postage on e-commerce items, say—Xu soon decided to target younger consumers, experimenting with quirky products that took the stodgy insurance industry by surprise. For example, during the 2014 World Cup, Zhong An offered a “watching football, drinking too much” plan, which cost less than $1 and covered medical expenses for self-inflicted injuries incurred due to midmatch stupidity. Those kinds of niche offerings have added up: The company has sold more than 7.5 billion policies to around 535 million customers. “I believe insurance is an underestimated area,” says Xu, who previously worked as a product manager at Google. “There’s more we can do.” Now Xu is moving into bigger categories, including health and auto.